This journey hasn't gone exactly as I'd hoped it would, if I'm being honest. In this episode, we're riding the entrepreneur roller coaster together - as I reflect on why sales aren't where I'd hope they would be and discover mid-episode that I'm doing (a little) better than I thought.
This journey hasn't gone exactly as I'd hoped it would, if I'm being honest. In this episode, we're riding the entrepreneur roller coaster together - as I reflect on why sales aren't where I'd hope they would be and discover mid-episode that I'm doing (a little) better than I thought.
Maybe it's because I'm a math person, but I've always been kind of obsessed with number goals, like goals that are numbers oriented. Like if I am on a diet, I like to see the numbers on the scale moving. Or if I'm weightlifting, I like you know, if I'm weightlifting I like to see them moving up. If I'm reducing calories, I like to see them moving down. A very numbers oriented person Don't really care about how the genes are fitting. I really just kind of care about whether or not I'm able to run just a little bit farther a number right, or if I'm able to lift a heavier weight number again. And I was also the teacher who actually really liked star test, like the standardized testing, the state testing that everybody hates, and for really good reason. Yeah, I liked it because it gave me a goal, a very measurable goal, and that's probably why this week felt like eating humble pie, because the numbers are not going in the direction that I want them to go. But also it's just because as a business owner, you want to see that the things that you're doing in your business are actually working for you. And I had to kind of take a step back because I thought like, oh man, this isn't going the way that I envisioned it going Like. I envisioned that I was going to do A, B, c and D and I was going to get A, b, c and D results, and it doesn't always work that way. For example, number goal that I love is that I'm seeing that my lead magnet for that. I'm running a Facebook ad too. It's converting really well. I've got a very low click cost per click on that ad. It's not costing me a whole lot of money to get leads, and I've got a little over 500 people on my email list. Love that. Numbers type of goal right, I love it. It's great. I hit that number 500, feeling really good about myself.
Speaker 0:Here's the thing, though I'm expecting that I'm going to send an email out and I'm going to get some type of response Like do I expect that immediately, people are going to start purchasing from me? No, not necessarily, although I'm hoping for it. Right, I'm crossing my fingers that that's what's going to happen, but I'm expecting that if I give some sort of call to action and trust me at this point I've tested just about all of them that they're going to respond. So in this last week, I've sent, I think, four emails. The first was just a general weekly newsletter type of email. This is what we're doing in pre-K this week. Here's a link to a freebie, here's a link to everything that we're doing, but also just kind of sharing sort of what we're doing this week. And then there was another email that said hey, I've just uploaded a new resource. Go get it right now, for right now you can get it on major sale, but only today.
Speaker 0:And I knew sending it out that there was a really good chance at that point. You know, I had just under 400 people on the list that you know there's not going to be somebody who buys, and that's fine. But no one bought. Okay, you know, not a big deal, let it roll off the shoulder, you know. And then the next week I sent out another general newsletter. This is what we're doing this week Lots of clicks, actually like lots of engagement, great open rate, solid click through rate, no sales.
Speaker 0:So there's that. So I thought, okay, they're not responding to any type of sale. So let's try, let's try to give them, let's give them something, let's ask them what they want and in exchange I'll give them something Right. So sent out like hey, here's have coffee on me in the Starbucks barcode. Everybody loves that, right? Oh, and would you go fill out this quick three question survey? One person filled out the survey and no one bought coffee and it was sent out to almost 500 people.
Speaker 0:When you start to see that happen in your business and you're like, okay, you start to see that happen in your business and you're like, okay, clearly, what I'm giving them is either not what they want or it's not what they're ready for yet. Maybe they just need some more warming up, because I did get these leads super cold, right. These came from a Facebook ad, so maybe the leads are just really cold. Maybe I've got to warm them up a little bit more. That's where we're at. Also, I've had no more organic sales on TPT, so that's been another major bummer for me, because I'm thinking like I don't know, I guess I'm expecting a miracle, right, that I have two paid products and that somebody is going to purchase that paid product. But I'm also a little bummed about the numbers that I'm seeing, because I'm getting quite a few views actually, and probably that's from, you know, the people signing up for my newsletter and immediately it sends them like hey, you can get the full curriculum here. You know that kind of thing. And again, they're not super warm yet. So that is what I'm telling myself, that they're not very warm. But also, maybe, maybe it's the fact we're getting to the end of the school year and they're not wanting to make a purchase, even homeschool parents, maybe you're not wanting to make a purchase yet. So here's where we are and here's what we're doing.
Speaker 0:The first thing is I need to address the fact that my audience isn't warm enough yet. So what am I going to do? Well, I'm not going to stop sending emails, definitely not going to do that, and I'm not so far. They seem to be opening and clicking, showing that type of engagement with the weekly newsletter that goes out that says here's what we're doing in pre-K this week. So I'm going to keep sending those every week. I'm going to try to send a few more pictures in those emails to show them what we're doing, and I'm going to try to send them a few more ideas. So it's not just here's what I'm doing or here's some little printable that you can do, but like an actual idea, so they can feel like maybe inspired to do something on their own with some pictures, going to try that.
Speaker 0:The other thing that I did is I contacted Megan Wisdom, who's written a sales funnel for me before. She did a fantastic job and I told her I need a welcome sequence. Yes, I could write my own welcome sequence, but, as most of you guys know, there's a lot going on right now in my world A couple of conferences coming up at the end of June, a couple of sales coming up in July. We're opening up RTA this weekend actually, and I've got a big you know workshop for that, a live workshop for that, in addition to just everything that goes into RTA, my TPT stores and everything. So at this point it's one of those things that I've decided. You know what? I'm going to outsource that because it takes a lot of mental energy from me personally to write a welcome sequence, so I'm going to outsource that. She's the expert, so I'm going to hire that out.
Speaker 0:That, hopefully, will help warm up my audience so that by the time they get to my weekly newsletters and they get to that they're warmer and they're a little bit more receptive to what I'm sending them, even if it's just like will you fill out this form? Will you do this one? Will you hit reply. Will you go, actually take me up on my offer to buy you a cup of coffee? Will you just take this free thing that I'm giving to you? So hopefully that'll fix the warming up or help with that at least. And then the other thing that I'm doing is I'm releasing this week my summer resource. So I'm hoping that maybe because it's a summer resource and it's specifically for summer, that they will be more likely to go ahead and make that purchase.
Speaker 0:I am seeing some wishlists and I'm very encouraged by that. But oh, would you look at that? I literally just pulled up as I'm talking on my podcast. I just pulled up my dashboard and I actually did make a sale. I made a sale yesterday and didn't know it, and I made a sale today. So I'm feeling really good about that. I'm not going to lie, I'm feeling really good about that. I'm not going to lie, I'm feeling really good about that. So maybe not as humble of a pie as I thought it was, I'm feeling a lot better.
Speaker 0:So one of them came from my welcome sequence, so I can see that it came in the second email that goes out Not bad. So three sales, two sales apparently, and I actually was watching for emails to come in and I hadn't checked my dashboard after yesterday afternoon. I was watching for emails to come in, so I just assumed that I didn't have one. So, anyway, have made a couple of sales, but the thing is still going to be the same and I'm hoping that I'm going to switch my ads this next week to summer. I also have on the 27th, so in about a week from now I have next week I have the blog hop that's coming up. So I'm excited for that. I'm not expecting that I'm going to get like a ton of new email subscribers or anything, but I'm hoping that at least any new email subscribers that I get or any new exposure that I get, it'll kind of be a warmer audience. So that might be kind of nice. But yeah, I'm really excited for that.
Speaker 0:I'm excited to work with other TPT sellers. They actually they're all in RTA, so that's really fun to be able to work with other RTA sellers. My follower count right now is at 37. I again I'm assuming some of them are probably going to be people who are like maybe following along on the podcast or following along like an RTA who know the name of the store. But yeah, that's where I am.
Speaker 0:And for anyone who's feeling discouraged, it could happen the way that just happened for me, where I made a sale on the 9th of May and then didn't make a sale until the 20th, right, so that feels really discouraging. It also feels really discouraging when you're putting money into something, you're putting time into something and you're doing the things that you know you should be doing and it doesn't seem like it's working. And I just want to say that I feel like I'm feeling this a little bit more, being in a in a more saturated niche. I feel like this is a different space, but I am excited to see how things start to progress over the summer, and let me give you guys a few more numbers. So I'm going to run through a few more numbers real quick, tell you a little bit about the views that I've seen overall. So, overall, my free product actually has fewer views than my paid product. So my paid product has 220 page views.
Speaker 0:It was posted on the 4th of May, so we're about just under three weeks, in which I feel like is pretty good for less than three weeks in a very saturated niche. Not gonna lie, I'm pretty happy with that. The view-to-preview ratio is just over 40%, so I feel really good about that. The preview-to-purchase ratio is much lower. We're at like 3%.
Speaker 0:Traditionally, if I saw that I think, not knowing where my traffic was coming from that I'm having a lot of traffic that's coming, yes, from TPT search for sure, but I'm also having a lot of traffic that's coming cold or not cold. There's, they're kind of warm but lukewarm, I guess I would say for my email list, like they're brand new on my email list and then they're going to check it out. That makes me feel like I need to give it a little bit more time, knowing where that traffic is coming from. And I have seven wishlists on that one. My second paid product that I listed four days ago has 31 page views, 35 product previews. I'm not sure how that happened. I guess somebody opened it a couple of times and it's been wish listed once and never purchased. So I'm going to give that one some more time as well. Obviously the view to preview ratio is really high. So my thumbnails are performing well, which I feel good about, but I think I just need to give it a little bit more time to kind of get that exposure out there.
Speaker 0:But, being a very numbers oriented person, I'm not gonna lie you guys, especially before I saw those two sales kind of feeling really bummed out about how things are going. Even then, when I take a step back and I'm like, okay, you know, it's been three weeks basically just under three weeks since I listed a paid resource and I've only made like $22. But I've spent a lot more than that. I'm spending about $20 a day on ads. It costs a lot to get the domain started up. I've spent money in clip art that I've probably ever spent in my life. Like I've spent a lot of money on clip art and between everything, paying the VA to help create a lot of these resources, to do a lot of the redundant items we're spending a lot more than what we're making at this point, which I don't normally advise, but again, I've talked about that in a previous episode. So that's just kind of where we are.
Speaker 0:Overall, I'm feeling hopeful, but I still feel like there need to be some tweaks and some changes. So if you're listening to this and you're thinking, okay, I've been in the same boat where it's like you're putting all this money this time, this energy, this effort, into something because you guys, like it might just be two paid products in my store, but it took me a really long time to make those Like we're talking about really big, like six weeks worth of work and this next one that's about to go in the store, it's like eight weeks worth of work. It's an entire summer's worth of work, complete with like four short stories in there for kids to read. Like it's a lot of work. So, knowing how much has gone into those things and the thought process behind it and planning out all the blogs and doing doing all the things and like $22, if this were my only store right now, I would feel really discouraged and defeated if I hadn't done this before. But having done this before, it's like okay, I would feel really discouraged and defeated if I hadn't done this before. But having done this before, it's like okay, I'm not going to let this get me down. I'm going to come up with a plan Like where, where? What are the missing links here? What's going wrong? Where's this, where's the breakdown of the funnel and how can I fix it? So those are kind of some of the things that I'm seeing right now.
Speaker 0:We'll report back to you guys next week, hopefully. Those are kind of some of the things that I'm seeing right now. We'll report back to you guys next week, hopefully that we'll see some more sales within the next week and hopefully, as I start to run Facebook ads for this summer, which I'll probably split. I'll probably keep doing the dinosaur because it's doing well, but I'll probably split and do like $10, half of my budget $10 a day on dinosaur and like $10 a day on summer and just kind of see how it goes and play it by ear from there and if the summer does just as well, then I'll probably just move over into summer. So it's a little bit more generic.
Speaker 0:But yeah, that's where we're at and if you have questions that you are wanting to know the answer to and as you're listening along on the podcast, send me an email, make a post inside the Facebook group, tag me. You can post in the free group or you can post in the paid RTA. If you're in RTA, send me a message on Instagram, ask me. I'd love to know, I'd love to answer any questions that you guys have. But yeah, that's where we're at today, just shy of week three, and I will update you guys next week.